


Sometimes it's the princess

by Tabata



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, F/M, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 08:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Princess Jules lives locked up in a tower, guarded by a dragon that helps her to evaluate the suitors who, day after day, come to her to show their value, hoping to get her hand. But Jules is not like the other princesses and none of the men who show up is good enough, until one day someone arrives who see past appearances...





	Sometimes it's the princess

**Author's Note:**

> This story was insipired by [this](http://portsherry.com/comic/helping-the-princess/) cute little comic that I read some time ago, even though I added my own little twist to it.
> 
> Written for: COW-T #9  
> Prompt: Fantasy

The dragon was curled on the carpet, dozing off in the early hours of the afternoon. His massive body took up most of the room. Princess Jules sat on the floor, propped up against his tail, as she would usually do, and she was reading a book. It was her fifth that month and the situation was getting out of hand. She was going through her library faster than she had anticipated and getting her father to send more books was not going to be easy.

She had just finished reading another chapter when the tower shook horribly, sending her dolls collection flying across the room. “Here we go again,” the dragon said, yawning. “It's the third time this week.”

“It must be the weather,” Jules said, turning another page. “Suitors are always more active in spring. We don't get a single visit in winter, do we?”

“You're right,” the dragon agreed, stretching his legs and tail to shake sleep off. “I'll go check who is it this time.” 

The dragon came out of the biggest window of the tower – the only one he could get in and out of – and took a look around, flapping his beautiful silver wings. At the base of the tower there was a man with his arms raised to the sky and blue lightening sizzling between his fingers. “Evil dragon,” he called out the moment the dragon's shadow blacked out the sun for him. “The Great Azor orders you to let him in!”

The dragon flew theatrically around the tower twice and then he went back inside. He landed on the carpet again, his tail winding back around his body without knocking anything down. “So?” Princess Jules asked, raising her nose from her book again.

“It's a wizard,” the dragon reported to her.

She didn't look particularly impressed. “And what does he look like?”

“He's old,” the dragon said with quite the disgusted face. “Tall, bald, with a long white beard, you know the type. He called me evil and he said his name is Azor.”

Jules shook her head. “Never heard of him.” At that point Azor screamed something, there was a flash of blue light and the tower shook again. One of Jules' coffee mugs fell from its shelf and broke down. She sighed. “Please get rid of him. But don't hurt him, he's just an old man, after all.”

“Got it,” the dragon said. He jumped out the window again and glided down on Azor, putting on his most ferocious face. He pushed him down on the ground with a powerful flap of his wings and then he growled in the man's face for good measure. He was about to blow some fire just to add a little special effects, but the wizard crawled back a few feet and then fled, crying shamefully. 

After the wizard, there had been a sequence of different suitors: a mercenary, several knights, a very funny but also very ugly dwarf and a barbarian, who had broken all stereotypes by being very articulated – none of which had made the cut and earned the right to be let in. Jules was very depressed.

“I don't know, Vaelra,” she said to the dragon one morning, “maybe it's not working because nothing is how it's meant to be.”

“Nonsense!” Vaelra replied, snorting a puff of black smoke from his nose. “You just have to be patient. Finding the right one is not that easy, kiddo. As a famous princess once said, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.”

Princess Jules sighed. “Kissing frogs sounds a lot more fun than being locked in here.”

“Not if you get warts.”

“I could be asleep, then!” Princess Jules insisted, “And wait for my true love kiss. Minimum effort, maximum results, you know?”

They were discussing the pros and cons of a true sleeping spell forcing her and the whole kingdom to sleep when the bell rang. It happened so rarely that someone pulled the rope to ring the bell instead of just trying to knock down the door that, for a moment, they had forgotten the tower even _had_ a bell. “Who is it?” Princess Jules asked.

Vaelra looked out the window. “It's a young man,” he said. “This one's pretty cute.”

“How cute?”

“He's on the handsome side,” Vaelra answered. “Tall, honey blond, big blue eyes, charming smile, the whole shebang. What do you want me to do?”

Princess Jules bit at her lower lip, nervously. She was torn between curiosity and resignation. She wanted to know who this guy was, but she also wasn't eager to feel the disappointment that was surely going to follow after the man's introduction like it had happened so many times before. “Hear what he has to say,” she decided, eventually.

The dragon nodded and looked out of the window again, frowning sternly. The young man smiled his brightest smile at him. “Greetings, mighty dragon...”

“Oh, I like this one,” Vaelra grinned, his long fangs showing a little.

“I'm Prince Sebastian of Ancelin and I humbly ask permission to speak with the princess.”

The dragon didn't answer right away and he retreated inside the tower again. “He seems quite nice,” he said to Princess Jules.

“He would be the first,” she noticed.

“I know, I'm quite surprised myself,” Vaelra agreed. “But he rang the bell and greeted me. Oh, and he asked instead of demanding, which is a nice touch.”

“Yes, but is this enough to let him pass?” The Princess asked. “Go inquire some more.”

Vaelra cleared his throat and looked out the window once again. “Why do you want to speak with her, Prince Sebastian of Ancelin?” He asked in his best thundering voice. “Show me you are a valiant knight and I will let you in.”

Prince Sebastian smiled. “There's no reason for me to knock down the door or climb these walls if she doesn't like me,” he said. “Please, powerful dragon, just a few words and if she finds me unfit to be her husband, I'll be on my way.”

This time Vaelra hurried to come back inside the tower. “He doesn't want to tear down the tower and he said _please_ , Jules!” He said, thrilled. “He wants you to like him! I think we're onto something here!”

Jules didn't know what to do. Years of questionable suitors hadn't prepared her to deal with one that could be really worthy. Besides, she was sure the man had no idea what he was getting himself into, which meant the whole thing was going to get ugly the moment he would have known. But she didn't want to send him on his way without a word from her. He was being civil, so he deserved the same from her.

“I'll speak with him,” she said. The dragon seemed especially thrilled with her answer and he happily tapped the tip of his tail on the floor while she brushed her long auburn hair and straightened her white dress. 

Jules looked in the mirror at that reflection that she liked so much and that her father hated, the very reason why she was locked in this tower now. Then, she took a deep breath and pushed all her bad memories deep in the back of her head, where they couldn't hurt her or hinder her. She looked out the window with all the solemnity she was capable of, her back straight, her eyes serious and detached. “Prince Sebastian of Ancelin, my dragon tells me you want to speak to me,” she said. “This is not how it's done.”

Sebastian smiled at her more charmingly than he had done with the dragon. He wore his regal robes, magnificent but unpractical, and a sword at his hip that was more for show than anything else. He hadn't come to fight, that was for sure. “Princess, your beauty exceed by far any tale I have ever heard about you.”

“Have you heard a lot?” She asked then, wondering. Her father had locked her in a tower to hide the shame that she was to him and to his kingdom, but he hadn't refrained from the chance of building an alliance through her. He had put Vaelra to guard her tower and promised that only whoever the dragon would have deemed the most valiant was going to get the princess hand. It was a win-win situation. Either the dragon chose someone and she was going to be married off – despite the mockery that that marriage was going to be – and he would get a powerful ally or she was going to be locked in the tower forever. Both were fine for him. Luckily for her, Vaelra was a nice dragon and they decided together who was worthy and who wasn't. If she had to marry a stranger or remained locked in a tower all her life, it was going to be because _she_ had chosen one or the other.

“I have heard enough,” Prince Sebastian said, his smile nice enough to wake up butterflies in her belly.

Meanwhile Vaelra had come closer to the window to spy on them. He was trying to be subtle, but he was having a hard time being inconspicuous with a 20” head. “I would let him in,” he whispered to her.

Jules was hesitant. She liked the guy and he seemed nice, but she was scared of the rejection that was bound to come. She didn't want to keep her hopes up and open the door only to hear him call her names. Maybe it was better to send him home and be in this tower forever. She was fine here, wasn't she? “I'm not the kind of princess you want, Sebastian,” she told him, earning a smoky, angry snort from Vaelra.

Sebastian didn't lose his smile and took a few steps to be right underneath the window. “I know who you are, _Julian_.”

Jules opened her eyes wide in surprise. She hadn't heard that name in years and she wasn't expecting him to say it now. But she had stopped being Julian a long time ago. In fact, she had never really been him, despite her body. “How do you know that name?”

“I visited your kingdom once when I was a kid. I must have been five or six, perhaps. You were just a toddler back then, barely walking,” he explained. “We never met again after that, but I knew your father had only one child, so the princess in the tower had to be you.”

“And you came despite all this?” She asked, confused.

“I came _because_ of this,” he corrected her, gently.

Vaelra looked at her, raising one of his dragon eyebrow very meaningfully. “I tell you, if you don't let him in after this, I will let you out the window.”

She rolled her eyes. “Alright! Alright! Just open the door!”

Jules waited nervously as Prince Sebastian climbed the stairs two by twos. She didn't know how to deal with this man or what to make of what he had just told her. What if he was just mocking her? What if he thought he knew what was going on and instead he really didn't? The words just came out of her in a panicked stream the moment he showed up at the door. “Despite what my father said on the proclamation, none of this is binding. We've let you in, but you don't have to do this, Prince Sebastian. You don't have to marry me if you don't want to.”

“Oh, but I have no intention of marrying you,” Prince Sebastian said.

“That's disappointing,” Vaelra commented, snorting a tiny flame that singed the hem of Sebastian's cape.

“At least not right away,” he hurried to explain. “You don't remember me and you have no idea who I am, I owe you a couple of dates to decide if I'm really suitable for you or not. And if I'm not, I'll be on my way. My smile, although beautiful, can't be enough for someone as precious as you.”

“Oh, self-confident, cocky, but also flattering,” Vaelra said, quite satisfied again. “The young man is earning points.”

“Two dates,” Prince Sebastian insisted, taking a few steps towards her now that he knew he had the dragon's support. “Nothing more. And then you decide if you want to send me home or make me the happiest man alive.”

Princess Jules thought about it. “Let's say those dates go well and we marry,” she said. “Do I still get to be what I am?”

“You get to be whatever you want,” Sebastian said. “I'll be your husband anyway.”

“We have a winner!” Vaelra cried out. Then he pushed Jules towards Sebastian with his tail and, when she ended up in his arms, he pushed both of them out. “I want her home by midnight. Have fun!”

“Vaelra! Wait!” Jules called him, but the door was closed now and the dragon refused to open it.

After years spent locked in the tower, she was locked out of it for the first time. But Sebastian was holding his hand out for her and the world from this side of the door didn't look so bad after all.


End file.
